Top 100 Writer On Writing Quotes
#2. To Grandma,
for being my first editor and giving me the best writing advice I've ever received: Christopher, I think you should wait until you're done with elementary school before worrying about being a failed writer.
Chris Colfer
#3. The free-lance writer is one who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
Robert Benchley
#4. You think you have no 'talent'? Write anyway. lots of people with 'talent' don't actually act on it. As long as you write, you will learn, you will improve, and you will be better than anyone claiming to have 'talent.
M. Kirin
#5. I'm a memoir writer. I try to understand the world by taking experiences I have and making them into a story, whether it's a narrative memoir, blogging for The Huffington Post, writing poems, or talking on the screen about what has happened to me and how that relates to the world at large.
Staceyann Chin
#6. Editing one's writing is as easy as lighting a match while riding a bicycle.
Fennel Hudson
#7. If you haven't heard a rumor by noon, make one up. If you're a writer, make sure it's a full page of the book you're currently working on.
Lamont Tanksley
#8. You say you're a writer but you're depressed. Not an excuse; write from there. Write some depressing sh*t. Believe me. You will have plenty of readers who can relate. Remember writers write.
Stanley Christopher
#9. Good. Coffee is good for you. It's the caffeine in it. Caffeine, we are here. Caffeine puts a man on her horse and a woman in his grave.
Ernest Hemingway,
#10. A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.
Roman Payne
#11. The work of a writer, his continuing work, depends for breath of life on a certain privacy of heart.
Tennessee Williams
#12. The muse is fickle; ergo, when she knocks, ANSWER! It may take a while, but trust me, she WILL knock. In the meantime, keep your ear pressed firmly to the door.
Quentin R. Bufogle
#13. I felt stuck in a Sisyphean loop, writing the same press release over and over. Even more, I was tired of promoting other people's creations instead of creating something myself. I imagined myself on my deathbed, and I could hear my biggest regret: I never even tried to be a writer.
Helene Wecker
#14. From my writer's workshop, Know when it's time to put everything you've got on the page. Then, rip open a vein and do it!
Heather Burch
#15. Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#16. ...you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you've sold your first book.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#17. A writer who hasn't written anything worth-while is a most doubtful person.
Richard Wright
#18. In my experience, I've noticed that waiting on tables is one of two things that almost everyone thinks they can do. The other is writing. Perhaps it's no accident that there is only one letter of difference between waiter and writer.
Debra Ginsberg
#19. I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the day's work--and not with some enjoyment.
William Zinsser
#20. A writer's knowledge of himself, realistic and unromantic, is like a store of energy on which he must draw for a lifetime: one volt of it properly directed will bring a character to life.
Graham Greene
#21. I'm afraid of coaching, of writer's classes, of writer's magazines, of books on how to write. They give me centipede trouble - you know the yarn about the centipede who was asked how he managed all his feet? He tried to answer, stopped to think about it, and was never able to walk another step.
Robert A. Heinlein
#22. Things that only a writer would understand - you're writing a character - you tell that character who she or he is and they stop you and make it clear, they are the ones telling their story. You just have to let them tell it.
Lisa Marbly-Warir
#23. I am very active on Twitter and one thing that keeps popping up is "How do I balance having a kid and writing?" And I know it should not be as aggravating, but I know no one ever asks a male writer that. Or, any male that.
Celeste Ng
#24. Magic : when you create something from the materials around you to astound and make the audience say "Wow." Magic happens on mundane days. It happens when you least expect it. It brings a spark to our drab and monotonous days.
Avijeet Das
#25. I am happiest sitting against a tree, with my notebook or sketchpad on my knee, capturing the moment.
Fennel Hudson
#26. I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it ... .By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you ... .Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.
Margaret Atwood
#27. I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of starving him.
Edward St. Aubyn
#28. How to read writers on writing: With respect, amusement, and skepticism. They will contradict one another-as they should-for each writer brings an individual history to the writing task. There is no single theology here.
Donald Murray
#29. To write a novel is to dream while awake, then express the dream to the reader in an absorbing way. The road leading from the writer's inner world to the readers' is paved with prose.
Alan Joshua
#30. But on the question of who you're writing for, don't be eager to please.
William Zinsser
#31. I have always enjoyed my solitude. It gives me time to think and to write.
Avijeet Das
#32. If the voices in your head make you cry, you're a lunatic. Put their words on paper, and you're a writer.
D. VonThaer
#33. Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.
Paul Auster
#35. The whole trick is to make it feel like you're spying on real people's lives as they get through the day. When I'm writing, I have to trick myself as a writer. If I consciously say, 'I'm writing,' I feel all this pressure and somehow it doesn't feel as real as when it doesn't seem to count as much.
David O. Russell
#36. To be motivated to write a novel, I need to be unable not to write.
Johnny Rich
#37. Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining--by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like "surprisingly," "predictably" and "of course," which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Trust your material.
William Zinsser
#39. You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.
Paul Simon
#40. You know you are a writer when characters inside your brain keep demanding, 'This is my story! Now tell it or I will never leave you alone!
Christy Hall
#41. I think the essence of the argument has always been, first of all, the Guild doesn't want writing on spec. And that's been a major problem over the years. But obviously, to the young writer that's unfair and it's discriminatory, and it can be very hurtful to one's career.
Rod Serling
#42. Being a writer is like being in a relationship. If you're not 100% committed to your writing, you will fail to be the best that you can be.
Patti Roberts
#43. Writing is one means to investigate the mystique of life. Each fresh page is an unsullied canvas that an inquisitive writer employs to explore the poetic transience behind their existence.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#44. 82/ The truth is that writing is simply not reliable. You can't count on it to be there just because you've made time for it. In fact, making space might make it disappear.
Kim Addonizio
#45. The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.
William Zinsser
#46. Who thought up the dumb idea to arrange the memoir section in the bookstore by subject?
Slash Coleman
#47. I think you must remember that a writer is a simple-minded person to begin with and go on that basis. He's not a great mind, he's not a great thinker, he's not a great philosopher, he's a story-teller.
Erskine Caldwell
#48. The writer and his reader are both complicit in the act of storytelling. The writer must first leave a part of his soul on the page,like a contagion, which the reader then catches.
Cynthia Ogren
#49. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.
David Nicholls
#50. If a pen can communicate our thoughts, dreams, and emotions and be the voice of our soul, then ink is the medium that carries the message.
Fennel Hudson
#51. Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.
Ben H. Winters
#52. A pen that has clocked up a million words, a lifetime's memories, is worth more than the centrepiece in a jeweller's window.
Fennel Hudson
#53. Good or bad, words have an impact on each of us. As a writer, I can only hope that the effects my words have on others are more often good than bad.
Jessica Lave
#54. I love words. I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail. I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum. I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over. In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#55. I've never been high. Writing is my drug of choice. You don't ever have to come down from that kind of high, I tell ya. And, best part is, it's free.
Christy Hall
#56. My philosophy has always been if I can learn just one thing from an article or book on writing, it's worth it.
Writer's Digest Books
#57. I gradually realized that I was seeing another example of creative ebb, another step by another art on the road that may indeed end in extinction.
Stephen King
#59. I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.
H. Raven Rose
#60. All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought.
Paolo Bacigalupi
#61. The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners ...
Natalie Goldberg
#63. If you're a writer you're bound to write something fine, at least now and then, off and on.
Jorge Luis Borges
#64. Everybody is born with a little bit of writer in them. We all come with the desire to work hard to see our creations come to life on the page. But it is those who choose to do something about this passion that has been ignited inside of them that are true writers.
Brian A. McBride
#65. Pretend you're not spending $3 to read one of my books but buying me a coffee and having a conversation about yourself.
Robin Sacredfire
#66. I always wanted to be a writer, but Alan Moore's work and help inspired me to write comics. In some ways the biggest influence on me writing was Punk. There was the idea that you could do something by simply doing it.
Neil Gaiman
#67. If you're a writer, write. You just keep writing. And if you're a filmmaker, you keep doing what you can to keep telling your stories; you don't stay on the one. Keep moving forward and doing what you can to tell whatever story you can tell, be it via writing, be it via filming it.
Dana Brunetti
#68. Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a quantity of suggestion. A single incident, a mere anecdote - these form the spine of the short short.
Irving Howe
#69. And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.
Ezra Pound
#70. There are times when I can't believe how much ridiculous stuff happens to me and how brilliant it is to be in a position to write about it.
Carla H. Krueger
#71. Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature. Only he who writes entirely for the sake of what he has to say writes anything worth writing. It is as if there were a curse on money: every writer writes badly as soon as he starts writing for gain.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#72. I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.
Francois Mauriac
#73. I'm very rigid about my schedule. I sit down at 8 A.M., and the Internet blocker goes on. My standard time is 120 minutes. I'm a compulsive writer, so it reminds me to stop writing ... If I write more than that, I turn into an ogre for my kids.
Claire Cameron
#74. [I]t's the child writer who has figured out, early on, that writing is about saving your soul.
Betsy Lerner
#75. Confront the page that taunts you with its whiteness. Face your enemy and fill it with words. You are bigger and stronger than a piece of paper.
Fennel Hudson
#76. An ad for cigars appears in 100,000 newspapers; sales of that brand increase by 3% for a short time thereafter. A new play receives a viciously negative review in a theatrical journal that prints 500 copies; the playwright shoots himself. Who's the better writer?
Jason Lutes
#77. If I could split myself into five people, I would still be behind on my writing schedule. I see now why James Patterson cloned himself so many times.
Peter James West
#78. To be a writer and political is a dangerous thing. To be a writer and apolitical is even more dangerous. Art is right, left; in truth, it has only one direction and that is forward.
Chris Campanioni
#79. The key to being a wonderful writer is not to write. You just get out of the way. Leave room for God to walk in the room. And when I write something that I know is right, I get on my knees and say 'thank you.'
Michael Jackson
#80. There are too many "creative writing" courses and seminars, in which young wirters are constantly being taught to rewrite the previous generation. They should be experimenting on their own. Every writer faces different problems which he must solve for himself.
John Dos Passos
#81. I personally believe that one learns to write by writing.
Jack Jordan
#82. I'm not patient at all. I avoid writer's block by writing. I power through with a bad version, so I can move on, and usually once I've gotten to the next scene, I'll discover what was missing from the bad version scene. Then I can easily rewrite it to get back on the right path.
Anders Holm
#83. I had decided to be a magician well before I decided to be a writer. I was the little boy who would get up on-stage and do magic wearing a fake mustache, which would fall off during the performance. I'm still trying to perform those tricks. Now I do it with writing.
Ray Bradbury
#84. As you write your novel, you gradually start thinking like some of your characters in it. And at times the writer may lose himself completely in some character.
Avijeet Das
#85. Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of a story.
Mine is: A reflection of life plus beginning and end (life seems not to have either) and a meaning.
Mary O'Hara
#86. I was always a writer - working on campaigns was never a profession for me. It was something I did on the side, really, so the trajectory hasn't been a political operative who likes to dabble in writing and finds himself into stumbling on film and TV - that was always my goal.
Beau Willimon
#87. Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.
Greil Marcus
#88. All songs are already perfectly written. It is the writer's job to find it and get it on paper.
Beth Nielsen Chapman
#89. If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.
Louis L'Amour
#90. There is only one person who needs to be convinced that you're a writer. That would be you.
Tim Campbell
#91. Reflective writing produces distinct rewards. A writer does not claim to live exclusively in the moment. A pensive writer retreats into oneself in noble attempt to meld memory, thought, faith, doubt, and other strong emotions into thought capsules while exploring the inscrutable web of creation.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#92. As an author I'm in my head all day and I worry that I lose touch with reality. But then my dog pees on my shoe and I know I've found it again.
Michelle M. Pillow
#93. The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of mediocrity must be satisfied. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, shadows of truth which they can hold as truths.
Aleksandar Hemon
#94. Stop beating yourself up over all the days you didn't work on your story. Focus on what you can do today.
Sit down, and write.
M. Kirin
#95. Every word I write is a seed that I may nurture into a small, beautiful poem or a tall, soaring tree.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#96. If you're a writer, the insight of other writers - if there's some kind of Holy Grail message on how to deal with writer's block or how to deal with any problem that can come up - whether you're writing about yourself or a group of people, I find that very interesting.
Jim Rash
#97. Realize that by hurting your own characters, you are not a sadist. You are not deliberately hurting your loved ones merely to watch them suffer. You're giving a gift. You're helping them grow and develop. Your characters take on deeper meaning to become more alive on your pages. They'll become real.
James Chartrand
#98. ...being "rather unique" is no more possible than being rather pregnant.
William Zinsser
#99. The pen, a double-edged mystery: cuts the writer, heals the reader.
Jenim Dibie
#100. The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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